


Soft Things

by baku_midnight



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Animals, Daryl loves animals, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Pets, a bit of drama but mostly just cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 12:51:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11313783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baku_midnight/pseuds/baku_midnight
Summary: Daryl tends to pick up every stray or wounded animal he can find, no matter how hopeless the case...and watching him fail to save creature after creature hurt Jesus's heart more than seeing the sad little animals themselves.





	Soft Things

**Author's Note:**

> Despite certain trends to the contrary, I'm sure that Daryl is the romantic, sentimental, heart-on-his-sleeve one, and Jesus is the practical, pragmatic, logical one, when it really comes down to it.

There was one thing Jesus didn’t bring home if he found it on a run, and that was an animal. He felt kind of bad about leaving cats, rabbits or pigeons to their fates when he spotted them cowering in old barns, or crawling around malnourished and patchy, but it simply wasn’t practical to cart them back to Hilltop and commit resources to their rehabilitation and care. That, and, typically, his heart couldn’t handle the little creatures’ suffering. He couldn’t stand the sight or the sound. Nothing chased him out of a building faster, not even walkers, than the sight of an injured critter scuttling across ragged floorboards.

 

Daryl had an opposing policy, Jesus was starting to notice, in that he stopped for just about every sick and sorry creature he saw. So long as the species in question wasn’t “for eatin’”, as he put it, Daryl would spend a good part of the day chasing down and trying to lure out every baby bunny and skittish kitten he so much as glimpsed out of the corner of his eye.

 

Daryl had a major weakness for soft, pathetic things. Usually, the useless little animals would expire in a matter of hours; if they were weak enough to fall into human hands, they typically weren’t long for the world. But Daryl tried anyway, and watching him fail to save creature after creature almost hurt way more than seeing the sad little animals themselves.

 

Jesus was picking through a cardboard box filled with clothing, trying to find anything that wasn’t too grub eaten, when Daryl shuffled out of a back room with his hands clutched in front of him. His thick palms were cupped gingerly over something that cheeped exasperatedly, little sounds trickling out between the gaps of brown fingers.

 

“What’s that?” Jesus asked, playing dumb, because he’d tried stern warnings and gentle reminders and neither seemed to have any effect. Jesus was usually pretty good at stopping Daryl from doing anything too dangerous with nothing more than a firm enunciation of his name, but he hadn’t been able to break him of this habit no matter how hard he tried.

 

“S’nothin’,” Daryl answered quickly, “doesn’t matter. It’ll be fine.”

 

“It _won’t,_ though,” Jesus replied, watching as Daryl knelt and placed the tiny bundle in his hands inside a cookie tin, left open on a defunct stove. The meek cheeping stopped when Daryl put a dishtowel over the box, closing the bird gently inside.

 

Jesus’s brow furrowed and he went back to making a perfunctory effort of looking for supplies, knowing that Daryl’s attention was now going to be completely stolen by his latest orphan and he wouldn’t be any good as a scavenging partner. They returned home shortly after, Jesus driving so that Daryl could keep the cookie tin on his lap.

 

Sure enough, the baby bird didn’t make it through the night, despite Daryl’s best efforts to water it and arrange its dishcloth nest. They awoke to find the sparrow stiff and with eyes shut tight, Daryl cradling the creature briefly when he thought Jesus couldn’t see and then taking it outside.

 

When he came back inside, Daryl was hunched and silent, his bangs hanging low over his eyes.

 

Jesus’s brow furrowed. “Daryl…”

 

“S’fine,” Daryl answered quickly, shrugging his shoulders.

 

Next, it was a baby squirrel. Jesus had raised his eyebrows when Daryl revealed the thing hiding in the inner pocket of his coat when the two walked through the gates in the rain, attempting to make some joke about Daryl raising his favourite food, but Daryl wasn’t even cognizant of the tease. His focus was honed to a point, and he cared for the tiny creature like a mother.

 

It rested on the dining table in an apple box lined with rags. The little thing had its eyes still closed, its tail nearly bald of fur from neglect. They had nothing to feed it with; it wouldn’t accept goat’s milk, even lovingly spooned to its mouth by Daryl’s fingers, and it died in a matter of hours.

 

In the evening, Daryl settled down on the loveseat and Jesus climbed up beside him, folding his legs under him. Daryl leaned into him, resting against his shoulder, heaving a sigh as he slumped into the couch. The man was pretty unsubtle in his requests to be comforted, and putting his head against someone’s shoulder or chest was a pretty clear sign.

 

Daryl buried his head in Jesus’s side and Jesus’s heart clenched. He reached and put his hand through Daryl’s knotty hair, stroking his scalp with tented fingers.

 

“Things happen,” Jesus whispered, putting his mouth against Daryl’s crown. He smoothed through his hair for as long as Daryl let him, standing after only a few minutes and heading outside to busy himself in some chore, or smoke his stresses away. Jesus let him go, eyes drifting to the empty box on the table.

 

Scouting runs occupied most of their time, which Jesus was grateful for, being able to be on the run, in solitude or with a small group. It helped relieve the itch of claustrophobia within the walls of Hilltop, cloistered behind battlements of charred wood and iron. Often the two of them went in separate directions or for different purposes. They’d departed Hilltop in the morning, Daryl planting a kiss in the part of his hair and Jesus returning the token with a squeeze of his hand, going separately to what might be their last trip. It didn’t help to dwell on the fact that their time together was possibly limited, so they didn’t mention it, except in lingering glances and kisses that drew long and sentimental.

 

Jesus returned home first with news from the Kingdom, and Daryl didn’t come back for hours after, finally dragging himself through the gates when it was starting to pour down rain, blown in from the mountains and picking up in intensity. Daryl had his coat drawn tightly around him beneath the downpour and Jesus’s stomach did its usual warning flip.

 

“Oh, no, Daryl, not again,” Jesus insisted as he lead the man inside and watched him shake out of his sleeves, spraying rainwater all over the carpet. Daryl ignored him as he pulled a meek-looking kitten out of where it was hidden under his arm and brought it to rest on the table in a pile of dishcloths.

 

The small creature looked healthier than Daryl’s usual strays; its eyes were open and searching, even as it stumbled about on shaky legs in the cold and damp trailer. Jesus watched as the man took off his coat and went to the cabinet for cooked meat rather than milk out of the cooler, bringing the offering to the kitten. It just stared at the meat and then looked back at Daryl as if utterly confused.

 

Jesus felt his heart crawl up his throat as he watched the dejected expression grow on Daryl’s face. His look was determined, and he tried to entice the cat with the food for another few minutes before giving up and patting the cat on its boney back instead. The creature folded its legs under itself and settled in on the blanket provided, head drooping before it fell asleep.

 

Daryl let out a sigh, and Jesus reached for him, placing a hand on his arm. Daryl shrugged it off.

 

“It’ll be okay, don’t worry,” Jesus said, “it just needs to rest.” Lying through his teeth wasn’t the best way to go, but it was all he could think to do. He was fully aware that the stray wouldn’t last the night, and he was pretty sure Daryl expected the same. But it hurt too much to just leave the possibility in the air, unchallenged. He tried to step forward to take Daryl’s hands but Daryl moved away, wiping at his nose with the back of his wrist.

 

“Goin’ for a smoke,” Daryl announced, and went back out into the rain. Through the shadow he cast in the light of the porch, Jesus saw he stayed on the doorstep, shoulders hunched.

 

It was late at night, and after Jesus had checked in with Maggie and finished one rotation on the gates, his overcoat sopping and hair heavy and twisted with moisture, that Daryl finally came back inside. He climbed into bed and curled in against Jesus’s chest, hiding his head in Jesus’s shoulder as they lay on their sides facing each other.

 

Jesus stroked his hair, running fingers across the stubble on his cheeks and chin. Daryl subtly relaxed, though his shoulders were still tight with unseen weight.

 

“You’re not a stray, you know,” Jesus whispered under the sound of rain falling on the roof of the trailer in a constant cascade, “you have a home. One you made and that you protect. You’re not alone in this world, Daryl. You’re not.”

 

The next morning, to the surprise of both of them, the kitten was alive. Not only alive, but it had devoured the meat left out for it and was crying for more. Daryl was determined to get more and practically ran to the root cellar of the barn to get it. He brought back an aging hunk of steak and cut it into fine pieces with his pocket knife, feeding each little morsel by hand to the little creature. Jesus stood with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning in the doorway with a fond look on his sleep-slackened face.

 

Over the next few days, the kitten grew, and after a month’s time, its round, babyish face was maturing into the long, smart face of an adult cat. Tortoiseshell coloured with a mottled black and orange coat, the slim creature wandered freely around Hilltop, curiously exploring every feature of the settlement, returning home to the trailer late at night to sleep and feed.

 

“You gonna name her, ever?” Jesus asked, scratching the cat between the ears as she stood on the dining table and demanded attention.

 

“Naw, just gonna end up callin’ her ‘cat’, anyways,” Daryl mumbled, lacing up his boots and cinching the cuffs of his pants around them.

 

“What if someone else gets a cat? Then how will you know which one they’re talking about, hmm?” Jesus replied, eyes smiling.

 

Daryl shrugged, “you name ’er, then.”

 

Jesus tapped his gloved finger on his lip as he thought. “Princess.”

 

Daryl scoffed and shoved at him on his way out the door, Jesus following him and the cat swiftly treading after, dashing off to find fun while her owners were out.

 

“Okay, Mittens? Pussy?” Jesus jabbed, and Daryl just rolled his eyes, “Geraldine? Susie? Stop me if I land on the right one.”

 

“Queenie” is what ended up sticking—because apparently if Daryl’s cat was going to be royalty, she was going to be queen—and the cat was soon being called as such by everyone in town, little children calling excitedly when they saw her and older citizens stooping low to scratch her head. Queenie was somewhat skittish, but brave when it mattered, catching mice and rats that tried to take up shelter in the cellar and barn, her prowess as a hunter making Daryl quite proud.

 

It didn’t take long for her to become a nuisance indoors, though. She slept in Jesus’s clothes and managed to cover them in white hair despite being mostly black-coloured. She also demanded to be fed from Daryl’s hand whenever she didn’t feel like putting in the effort of hunting, a request that Daryl easily granted over and over rather than keeping what little food they had for the _people_ of the colony. Jesus rolled his eyes at the sappy display, shaking the fur out of his favourite sweater.

 

The rainy season had started early and seemed to drag on in perpetuity, rain slicking the road through the market and causing spills left and right. Runs didn’t stop, though, and Daryl was insistent on heading to Sanctuary and back to meet with Dwight. The shaky alliance he’d made with the three colonies after Negan was captured still put a lot of people’s nerves on edge, but Dwight truly seemed to have turned over a new leaf. Daryl still routinely suggested using him for target practice, yet he went to their monthly visits to Sanctuary anyways, if not only out of spite.

 

“You can’t take your bike,” Jesus had insisted, knowing his word held a lot of weight, but also knowing there was little to be done to part Daryl from his motorcycle. “The road is too slippery, you’ll spin out.”

 

“I know,” Daryl had grumbled, pulling on his coat and proceeding on foot.

 

That was three days ago, one day longer than Daryl was supposed to be away from home.

 

Jesus tried not to worry, and for a day he was mostly okay, pushing himself through his work and trying to think about other things, populating the landscape of his mind with the most plausible scenarios: maybe he took another day at Sanctuary to deal with pressing matters. Maybe he took a detour on the way home to hunt. Maybe the rain washed out the roads and he had to go the long- _long_ way around. Anything was possible, and most likely Daryl was just a little delayed.

 

Each scenario started to become less and less plausible, in Jesus’s mind, the day after that. All he could think about was Daryl slipping down a ravine, breaking his back and dying in the mud. Or being devoured by a herd 500 heads deep. Or wandering off into the woods and getting gored by a feral pig.

 

He sat up on the couch in the trailer, a book held loosely in his hand, thumb pressed into the spine and words dancing meaninglessly across his vision. It was impossible to concentrate on the fiction, so instead he briefly considered the relative merits of taking in strays versus leaving them in the wild. He had, after all, practically brought Daryl in while he was a wild beast, raving and dirty and with his hackles up 24/7—luckily, he’d melted pretty quickly after seeing his family. And, if he was really thinking about it, it was Daryl and Rick who brought _him_ home in the first place.

 

As he pondered, Queenie hopped up on the couch with him, leaping to the armrest and then to the back, marching across to rub her forehead on his arm that was slung over the back of the couch. He huffed and snapped the book closed, laying it on the cushion beside him and lifting a hand to scratch the cat’s chin.

 

“So I get to keep you, and lose him, huh?” he mumbled sardonically, ignoring the clenching in his heart. Picking up strays was one thing—falling in love with them was a whole other level of foolishness.

 

 

 

The next day, Jesus was less irritable and more a total wreck, barely held together by bits of elastic and tape, moments from breaking down and just _unleashing_ on somebody. He was worried, of course, but also _mad._ Mad at himself for caring for the most transient and emotionally unavailable man left on earth, but also at Daryl for leaving alone. He could’ve at least taken someone else as back-up.

 

Sentimental bastard probably saw a baby squirrel under some floorboards and went to chase after it and got his dumb ass _bitten_ in the process, Jesus thought with irritation, as he stumbled through his chores.

 

Cleaning up around the trailer was easy with only one to clean up after. Ironically—or, not so much, if he really thought about it—it was harder to keep the place clean with just the two of them then it was for the short period of time that his trailer contained five. Daryl kept few possessions, but the ones he did keep seemed to always end up on the floor or in doorways, whereas Maggie and Enid were neat and tidy by nature, and Sasha kept to herself so much that she was barely even around—she, too, disappeared in the black of the night and didn’t come back. Goddammit. Less thought about _that_ the better.

 

But it was too late, Jesus was on a miserable tract and unable to get off. What the hell made people want to up and leave him? Did he do something wrong? Was he not accommodating _enough_? He’d given the clothes off of his back. He’d waited patiently through nights when Daryl was up and screaming from nightmares of what had been done to him, sitting up in bed and waiting while Daryl smoked out on the porch in the small hours of the morning, staying awake so he could welcome Daryl back in when he was ready. He’d given a portion of his heart—something he promised never to do—to the man already, and this was how he repaid it?

 

Jesus hefted a pile of clothes from the floor and threw them back down, and they landed at his feet with a _thump_. The affect was not as satisfying as he’d hoped, so he snatched a few books from the shelf and threw them as well. They _fwump_ ed a little more powerfully, but still he wasn’t satisfied, so he lifted his foot and slammed it into the edge of the kitchen table, sending it toppling, taking its contents with it.

 

He swore and sank down to the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees. Goddamn it. Goddamn.

 

“Stupid son of a bitch,” he whispered, to no one in particular.

 

Gathering his gloves and coat around him, Jesus went out into the settlement, looking around. Hilltop was in full swing with folks doing chores and getting ready for the day, so Jesus went to join them, wandering towards the walls to sweep the perimeter for walkers. Queenie prowled around the inner wall, sniffing at things on the ground that amused her, seemingly uncaring that her owner was gone.

 

The wall was in good repair, but there were holes that they didn’t bother to fix, since the average walker couldn’t get through a space less than four inches wide—unlike a determined cat could. Jesus watched as Queenie climbed through a gap between two poles, disappearing out of the safety of the settlement. His heart clenched just a little with worry, but a part of him was almost relieved. If the creature was out of the walls, it wasn’t his responsibility anymore, and a selfish part of him was glad for that. He didn’t sign up to be the single dad of a needy cat, and a spiteful part of him thought that knowing his dear, precious cat was in danger would bring Daryl home faster.

 

It was stupid, but Jesus thought irrational things when he was angry. And being angry was easier than being heart-broken, so he stuck with it as long as he could, allowing it to carry him through killing walkers that meandered close to the walls, using the wall as a springboard and kicking their skulls lose, slashing and stabbing with his daggers and ending their shambling un-lives.

 

After a few minutes, Jesus heard a sound he didn’t expect—it wasn’t walkers, but a high-pitched crying, like the voice of a child. He craned his neck for it and saw Queenie in the distance, standing near a pile of brush and crying at the top of her lungs.

 

The cat didn’t look injured, walking back and forth in a small spot, back arched and tail raised high, so Jesus let her be. She kept complaining as though lost, and Jesus ignored her, looking for threats. He nearly stepped on a crumpled walker, its broken limbs splayed behind it while it dragged itself through the brush, and so he stomped on its skull, letting it squish beneath his boot.

 

Queenie cried again. She sometimes made that sound when she wanted food or attention, and damn him if Jesus was going to indulge that, so he ignored her again. The sound quieted and Jesus couldn’t hear any walkers, either, so he started to turn to head down to the south end, where the walkers were usually thinned by the trees, when he heard the call yet again.

 

 _Damn cat_ , Jesus huffed as he turned into the sound. As he approached, the cat sped into the bushes, of course, and Jesus followed, if not just to tap her on the rear and scare her into silence. What kind of hunter alerts everyone—prey and predator alike, in this case—to her position? Unbelievable. He came closer, until he could see just the end of her speckled rear end poking out of the brush and made to lunge in, when he heard a soft voice.

 

“Hey there, girl,” came a mumble, and Jesus stilled as recognition washed over him, along with relief so profound he thought he might melt into a puddle. “Whatchu doin’ out here?”

 

He leapt forward, pushing bushes aside and found Daryl seated in the brush, one leg bent against him and the other pushed awkwardly out, a strip of shirt sleeve wrapped around it, just below the knee. He quickly scanned the injury, before dropping to his knee in front of Daryl.

 

“You…you…” he mumbled, reaching out for Daryl, unsure of where to put his hands, wondering if he was injured. “How’d you get out here?”

 

“Hadta stay out for a few more days ’cuza the rain, was goin’ around the back way,” Daryl replied, strangely bemused for a man in his position, trapped in the brush with a cat climbing back and forth across his injured and uninjured leg. “Twisted m’ankle or somethin’. Had ta hide.”

 

He scrubbed at Queenie’s head, the cat rising to meet his fingers and purring in pleasure. Jesus wanted to be where she was—but he was still a little too shocked for cuddling. Tonight would be a whole other story, but for now, he had to work on getting Daryl to his feet.

 

“I thought you were…” Jesus began, reaching for Daryl’s arm to lay it over his shoulder for him to lean on while he stood, though Daryl needed little help and pushed him aside. “I thought…and the cat…” he tried to continue, but everything just came flooding to the surface in a rush and he crumpled over, putting his hands on his knees, hair falling in front of his face.

 

Tears sprang to his eyes, of relief, of anger, of shock, his hands trembling. Daryl placed a hand on his back, rubbing it soothingly. It was quite the sight, and Jesus felt more than a little guilty: Daryl was the one that was injured, tired, and dirty, and Jesus was the one breaking down. He wiped his nose with his muddy sleeve and tried to reach to support Daryl again, but only got as far as wrapping his arms around his neck and squeezing him into a lop-sided hug.

 

All in all, he felt pretty damn pathetic, hanging off of—a still-injured—Daryl in a copse of smoke bushes just a few yards from the safety of home, attached to his side and practically pulling him down while Daryl stood patiently, tortoiseshell cat doing figure eights around his legs. But luckily, the man he loved had a weakness for soft things.


End file.
